


voice

by avid_author_activist



Category: Ranger's Apprentice - John Flanagan
Genre: F/M, Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Angst, minor trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:47:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22356652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avid_author_activist/pseuds/avid_author_activist
Summary: Three months after Will's return to Araluen, he goes on a diplomatic mission with Alyss.
Relationships: Will Treaty/Alyss Mainwaring
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	voice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheButterflyRanger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheButterflyRanger/gifts).



> The Kiss at the end of Ruins of Gorlan never happened. Nossir. Irrelevant.  
> Occurs in summer: for reference, Halt and Will returned from Skandia in late spring.  
> This is an EXCERPT of a work that might not be finished, but I still like it, so I'm tossing it out on the Internet in case anyone enjoys it!

Baron Arald looked up from his papers as Lady Pauline swept into the room.

“Pauline,” he said, greeting her with a nod. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

The line brought him a small burst of satisfaction. After all, it was a good one, he thought. Very… sophisticated. He looked to Pauline, wondering if she’d taken notice.

The white-robed Courier did not share his sentiments. “It’s about Baron Harris of Whitby Fief, sir,” she began immediately. “Or his garrison, rather.”

“What about his garrison?” Arald asked, hiding his disappointment. Not everyone could share his sense of sophistication, after all.

Pauline consulted her papers. “Two weeks ago, the garrison at Castle Whitby was rotated due to a change in the standing army. Since then, reports have floated in from the eastern villages of men—bearing the crest of Harris—raiding across the border for resources. Food, mostly, but you can understand the strain this places on small farms.”

Arald swore under his breath. Then, he asked, “What do you propose we do?” Pauline generally didn’t come to him with this sort of thing unless she had a solution already in the works.

“Well, Nigel has had his scribes put together a formal request—nothing out of the ordinary, you understand, from the barony of one fief to another. Baron Harris will reprimand or replace the captain of his forces, or we’ll take legal action.”

Arald nodded his approval. “Out of curiosity, who are we saddling this mission with? Surely it’s a little routine to require your personal attention.”

“Actually, my lord, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” said a quiet voice from the corner.

Halt the Ranger stepped out of the shadows, flicking his cowl back to reveal his face. Absolutely no one looked surprised, to his intense disappointment.

In truth, Arald was still working to calm his beating heart, but over the years, he’d learned to get used to surprises like these. They were a fact of life when one worked closely with the Ranger Corps, he thought. People appeared out of shadows, showed up in your office without warning, climbed thirty meters up towers motivated by nothing but intense curiosity.

“Surely you’re not suggesting that _you_ deliver the request, Halt,” he said, perhaps a little too quickly.

The Ranger arched one eyebrow. “And what might you be suggesting by that, my lord?”

Pauline stifled a noise in the back of her throat that might have been a laugh. She played it off as a cough, turning away for a brief second. “The Baron was merely referencing your brouhaha with Sir Montague, Halt,” she said once she’d regained her composure. “I’m sure he meant no offense.” She shot a sharp glance at Arald, who shook his head.

“No offense meant, Halt! None at all.” The Baron decided not to remark on the _brouhaha_ comment. Pauline was teasing him, he knew, but he didn’t want to lose his only ally in the room. The combined forces of Lady Pauline and Halt would be formidable indeed.

“If I may, I don’t think I caused a _brouhaha_ with Montague at all,” the Ranger said sardonically. “The man fell into the moat of his own accord. I was merely in the room at the time.”

Arald rolled his eyes to heaven, but again chose not to comment. “Who would you suggest as the messenger this time, then?” he asked instead.

“My apprentice,” Halt and Pauline said simultaneously.

The Baron nodded. Alyss and Will were both competent, dependable people, despite their youth. Then he hesitated. “Is Will... _up_ for this sort of thing?”

“He is,” Halt said firmly. “I know he’s ready for it. Every single one of his assessors knew he’d be ready for it. The only person that doesn’t know it yet is himself.”

“Skandia was awful for his health, physically and mentally, after all,” Pauline murmured.

“Yes,” the Ranger agreed sadly. “The road to recovery will be a long one, but I’m hoping a success in an easy mission will help him along.”

Arald considered this. “It’ll be a week-long trip at the most, and close to home to boot,” he said, almost to himself. “And Alyss is one of our best Courier apprentices already,” he added with a nod to her mentor. “Will’ll be in good hands.”

->>\--->

Will had barely said a word for the last two hours. Alyss was doing her very best to not let the concern show on her face. It was the first time they had seen each other in a month or so, both having been busy with their respective training, and the only words they’d exchanged had been a brief greeting.

As a matter of fact, she’d had more interaction with _Tug_ than with her oldest friend. The horse saw her looking, and each time, he responded with a quiet toss of his head. _I know_ , he seemed to be saying. _I’m not used to it either_.

It was this, more than anything, that made Alyss decide enough was enough. It wasn’t precisely that the quietude bothered her—she had ridden missions with Halt, after all, and Halt wasn’t exactly known for his liveliness. It was that this silence just wasn’t _Will_.

“Alright,” she said firmly, and Will gave a surprised start at the sound of her voice. Alyss made a mental note not to say it so harshly the next time. “Looks like it’s almost midday, from the sun,” she prompted. “Where do you think we should stop for lunch, Will?”

His only response was to shrug his shoulders, but at least he didn’t put his head back down. That was a start, she thought. With a pang of sadness, she realized that it was like trying to get to know him all over again. Like it or not, what had happened in Skandia was a part of Will now.

Trying to get the “old” Will back would be pointless. But perhaps it would help if she made sure its negative impact on him was minimized as much as possible.

“You know I’m not great at living it rough,” she tried again. “I don’t know what a good stopping point looks like.”

Will regarded her for a moment. Alyss felt a brief flare of hope, but his brown eyes lacked their usual light. “Off the trail,” he mumbled eventually. Three words. That was something.

For now, it would have to be enough. Alyss forced a cheerfulness she didn’t really feel as she said, “Off the trail it is.”

->>\--->

After lunch, which consisted of dried beef and a shared loaf of bread, the rest of their day continued the same way. Alyss once asked Will to help her choose between two forks in the trail, and he got out his map and northseeker and told her. She was beginning to realize that all his old skill was still there, but his self-confidence was not. Also present, Alyss reasoned, would be a boatload of trauma from Skandia. That would have to heal with time, she thought sadly, but at least she could help him along the way.

With perhaps an hour of sunlight left, she began to look for a place to camp for the night. There was no telling how Will might react to living in a strange farmer’s barn. Alyss managed to find a small clearing a few meters off the trail. It was sheltered enough from the wind, with grass for their horses and deadfall for a fire.

However, as she soon learned, gathering firewood and making a fire were two very different things, and Alyss had to turn to Will for help. “Could you help me make a fire, Will?” she asked, pointing at her pile of deadfall. “I’ve got dry wood over there.” Alyss had no plan for if her friend refused. Night was falling fast, and the idea of spending a night with no fire terrified her.

Fortunately, Will nodded. “Sure,” he said, and started making a tepee out of kindling. Perhaps Alyss was being fanciful, but she thought she noticed some of the old glint in his eyes.

She managed to make drinkable coffee by heating pond water and adding the beans, but dinner was more dry rations. Will certainly didn’t seem like he was about to go and hunt, and Alyss didn’t have a clue where to begin finding her own food. She also didn’t want to ask, for fear of losing her friend in the dark.

Will drank the coffee with a grimace but said nothing. Crickets sang from the bushes and the fire crackled merrily, but Alyss suddenly became aware of how quiet it was. It was just the two of them, their horses, and the wide forest around them.

Her training, instinctive after years of practice, refused to let the silence stretch on. Silence was not a good thing in a negotiation; it was even worse now. So Alyss started to talk.

“Neither of us remember this, but I am told,” she began quietly, “that in the beginning, there was only me in the Ward. It had been only a few weeks after the Battle of Hackham Heath, and already my father was dead, and my mother soon followed him.

“So there I was, barely a year old and already an orphan, with no friends but the Ward matrons who were charged with taking care of me. I was silent and shy, and when Horace came, I hardly interacted with him at all. There was already talk in the castle of how quiet little Alyss of the Ward would never find a craft or a mentor, about how I was doomed to work the fields when I grew up.”

Alyss paused, studying Will’s face across from her. Firelight played over his features, and where it hit his eyes, it turned them to pools of molten bronze.

“That’s unfair,” he said quietly, staring into the depths of his own mug. Two words only, but they had come without any sort of prompting. Alyss felt a smile curve across her face.

“I suppose it was, gossiping about me when I was barely a toddler. But servants will talk, so what can you do? But that isn’t my point. My point is that when you arrived at the Ward, I finally started interacting. They say my first word was Pa. But my second word was your name. Will.”

The word was emphasized, the sounds deliberate and clear, as if her mouth was hesitant to let it go. Alyss let it linger in the air, hanging in the silence by her strand of memory.

“Will.” He repeated his own name like he was saying it for the first time. “I—did that?”

“Yeah,” Alyss said simply. “You did.”

_You helped me find my own voice. It’s time for me to return the favor_ , she vowed silently.


End file.
